Lighting fixture component panels may be flattened or curved pieces of material including glass which may have straight or curved edges and which may be wholly transparent or wholly or partially translucent or subject to varying temporal or permanent levels of opacity. The component panels may be, for example, triangular or rectangular or hexagonal or oval or generally irregular pieces of glass of the same or dissimilar sizes, which are completely transparent. In a functional arrangement, adjacent edges or tangent or nearly tangent points or corners or regions of the panels may be assembled proximately to each other.
One known type of lighting fixture includes bound glass (BG) configurations. The term lighting fixtures means lighting appliances generally which are structurally fixed in place on a mounting surface or mobile or free-standing appliance or portable lighting. The bound glass configuration provides a U-shaped metallic channel around the edges of each panel section to be joined into a cooperative lighting arrangement. The U-shaped channel is often not seamless. Rather the U-shaped channel is formed into a bound shape which joins the ends of the U-shaped channel at a corner of a component glass panel. However, some kinds of bound glass fixtures have experienced difficulties. Securing the ends of the U-shaped channels reliably, for example, using soldering techniques is difficult. Soldered connections at the ends of the U-shaped channels and between adjacent channels tend to break from time to time and are generally time-consuming to prepare properly.
It may be desirable to secure lighting fixture component panels with minimal structural complexity in reduced hardware structures, irrespective of panel size and edge configuration and panel arrangement.